This blog is intended as a bulletin board to show the quilts I've been making on my vintage and treadle sewing machines. My husband and I collect antique and vintage sewing machines and I use them to make all my quilts. Here are some of the results.

Friday, 24 October 2014

Quilt show Fun

I have several quilts I still need to blog about, but have been gallivanting all over the countryside lately! Last weekend, my fairly local guild, London Friendship, held their show. Since we were holding it in a new spacious venue, they had asked my husband and I to put up a display of our antique and vintage sewing machines. We set up a treadle to work on as well as a Singer Featherweight and a few other vintage machines. There were some pictures hanging on the wall behind the tables, so we hung a few quilts over them to cover them up and arranged a couple of quilt stands to display quilts made on the antique and vintage machines. Here are a few pictures of the display (click on the photos to enlarge):

Singer 15-88 treadle machine

an assortment of Featherweights and Singer toy sewing machines and two Singer irons with a "pressing guide" produced by Singer

Singer 301 and accessories and toy machine which slides in a little worktable

Canadian machines and toys and an Elna toy machine

Our oldest Canadian hand crank machine

Basic set up. We had a lovely large space to display the machines

Christine R took this photo on Friday when I sewed on the Featherweight. My treadle belt broke and I had to wait for Jake to fix it.

I sewed on the treadle on Saturday. I worked at piecing the rows together of a Kaffe Fasset scraps thimble leaders/enders project.

My Bonnie Hunter Easy Street mystery was hanging in the show

My Kaffe diamond quilt was also in the show

We had a great time chatting with people of all ages about memories of their ancestors' machines. One older lady in a wheelchair sat watching me sew on the treadle with tears coming down her cheeks. Awesome hearing the stories and inspiring people to dig out those old machines and get them up and running. I do all my piecing on my 15-88 treadle and even some free motion quilting on it. Most of my quilting is done on my vintage Bernina 830.

About Me

I have been quilting since 1989 and do most of my quilting on a 1951 Singer 15-88 treadle sewing machine. My husband and I collect antique and vintage sewing machines and enjoy finding, cleaning, restoring and sewing on them together. Well, my husband doesn't do much sewing :-). But, when we demonstrate machines at museums or other shows, we have a stack of patches ready. Someday, there will be enough four patches to make into a quilt!